


in a shroud of frost

by flimsy



Category: Bandom, Panic At The Disco
Genre: Cabin Fic, M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-13
Updated: 2012-04-13
Packaged: 2017-11-03 14:12:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,699
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/382195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flimsy/pseuds/flimsy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jon wakes to the smell of burning wood and lacquer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in a shroud of frost

Jon wakes to the smell of burning wood and lacquer and voices from downstairs. It's some weird time between not-quite-dawn and too-late-at-night, an hour where it's not dark anymore, but early enough to stay in bed and listen to the world wake up. He stays like that for a while, listening, because his feet are warm and his bed and room have just the right temperature to sleep for another hour or three, until the sun comes up behind the mountains in the east. 

Brendon’s laughter is echoing up the stairs, down the hallway, penetrating through the door to Jon’s room, quiet yet insistent, and Jon rubs his eyes sleepily and rolls onto his side. His phone on the bedside table tells him that it’s five thirty-three a.m., some ungodly hour, and Jon has barely slept four hours. 

More voices from below, and Jon rolls to his feet nearly automatically, without thinking and even though he doesn’t even really want to get up; he just can’t stay here, holed up in his rook while the others are already up and about downstairs. 

He stumbles down the stairs, scratching his stomach. The burning smell gets worse on the way down, and when he reaches the living room, he sees Ryan and Brendon perched around the fire place, whispering quietly to each other, Brendon’s laughter carrying over occasionally. 

In the fireplace, Jon only sees when he steps closer, Ryan’s guitar is burning, identifiable by the purple-green shoulder strap on the floor to Ryan’s feet. In the corner Shane is filming, ghost-like, eyes fixed on the little screen of his camera. 

“You’re burning your guitar,” Jon states, and walks closer to them. 

“Yeah,” Ryan says, looking up and smiling a little. His hair is all in his face, glasses a little smudged – maybe soot, Jon thinks and tilts his head. 

“Why?” It’s. Jon doesn’t think this was one of the expensive guitars Ryan bought last summer, but he also thinks that it probably wasn’t cheap, and besides, you don’t just _burn_ guitars. 

“I don’t know,” Ryan says and rubs his face, squinting. “I hated it for a minute, I think.” 

“I hated it because Ryan hated it,” Brendon chips in, chin supported by his hands. “We couldn’t write well on that guitar anyway. Remember the shit we did yesterday?”

Jon’s eye flicker up to Shane in the corner; he’s still filming and Jon, used to being behind the lens instead of in front of it, is starting to feel uncomfortable. 

“I don't think it was that bad,” he says defensively, shrugging. Brendon shrugs back at him and pokes the fire with a stick. 

Jon blinks a few times, and then wonders where Spencer is, because he doesn't think Spencer would have allowed Ryan to burn his guitar. "Where's Spencer?" he asks, scratching his neck, feeling a yawn shudder through his body. It's so early, he thinks, or so late. 

“I don't know,” Ryan says, rubbing his eyes. 

"I saw him outside just like, some time ago,” Shane comments from his corner without looking up from his camera. 

Jon groans a little, yawns again, and then says, "Right, I'm going back to bed. It's way too early to be awake, seriously." He hopes the others get the hint, because he's not gonna make them go to bed like little kids; he's so not responsible for them. 

He pads back upstairs and crawls into his bed and falls asleep again. He dreams of smoke and foxes and blue pebbles, and the next time he wakes it's from the sun burning through the drapes and the smell of coffee rather than burning wood this time. He feels disoriented and has no idea how long he slept and what day it is. He showers quickly, and then joins the others in the kitchen, hair still wet, for a cup of coffee. 

Brendon is asleep (maybe?) on the table, arms stretched, face resting in the shallow crook of his elbows. His hair is standing like it does after he hasn't washed it in a day or two, and his fingers are twitching lightly on the hardwood surface of the table. Ryan is sitting next to him, socked feet on the table, cradling a cup of coffee between his hands. He looks hung over and tired, glasses a little askew. 

“What's up?” Jon asks and pours himself a cup from the coffee can; it's fresh and Jon's stomach twists a little at the smell, anticipation. 

“Nothing,” Ryan says. He sounds hoarse, blinking at Jon sleepily. “I had three hours of sleep. And I think I got smoke in my lungs.”

Jon snorts at that. “As if that ever was a problem before.” And seriously, Jon’s probably the chillest dude when it comes to weed consumption – hell, he was the one who rolled Ryan’s first joint – but the amounts of dope Ryan’s been smoking are kind of nearly obscene. 

Ryan just glares and rolls his eyes, takes another sip from his coffee. Only now Jon realizes the absence of the ever-present camera. “Where’s Shane?” he asks, tilting his head. 

Ryan shrugs, and pokes Brendon’s shoulder with his pinkie finger. “Still sleeping, I guess?”

Jon hm’s at that and brushes a couple of lyric sheets from the next chair to make room to sit. The thought of going upstairs for his camera is tantalizing; take a couple of pictures that are his own, that he doesn’t have to share with the world. 

“I think we should start that one song over,” Ryan says, fingers finding a vein in the table surface, and running along it. “I think it has potential, but something’s just. Missing.”

Jon has no idea what Ryan’s talking about – they’ve started and scrapped and worked over so many songs, Jon can’t even count them all. “Which one?” he asks, taking a long sip from his coffee; it’s a little too hot, burning down his tongue, sharp and sweet. 

“The one with the swordfish,” Ryan replies and then puts his empty cup on the table, stretching out in a fashion similar to Brendon, head tilted so he’s looking up at Jon. The sun is filtering in through their newspaper makeshift drapes, throwing weird shadows and angles all over Ryan’s cheek. 

“We don’t have a song with swordfish,” Jon says, rubbing his eyes again, shaking his head. There’s an S on Ryan’s cheek, a stark shape against his skin, but when Jon blinks to verify his vision, it’s gone.

“What?” Ryan says, stretching, back popping audibly. 

“Nothing,” Jon says, and puts his cup back on the table and gets up. He needs to get out of this house now; he needs his camera and sunlight and air that’s not polluted by drugs and the lingering smell of lacquer and days-old soda. “Going out for a bit,” he adds, but Ryan just replies with a tired wave of his hand. 

He goes upstairs to get his camera, and then wanders around the house for a while, taking snapshots of leaves and small insects. Something’s off, he can tell, but it’s like it’s at the back of his mind, tickling his consciousness and he just cannot grasp it. 

Back at the cabin, Brendon’s awake now; he’s sitting at the electrical piano, headphones kind of askew over his head, eyes shut in concentration. Jon scratches his beard, puts his camera on the kitchen table and sits next to Brendon, pressing his ear against the outer shell of Brendon’s right headphone. 

It’s the Cinderella theme song, with a slight twist as far as Jon can tell, and now that he’s sitting so close to Brendon he can hear him humming under his breath, quiet, a low rumble in his throat. Jon listens for a few moments, and then reaches up and pulls the headphone from Brendon’s ear. 

“Hey,” he says, and Brendon makes a little confused facial expression and then turns to look at Jon. “We should have lunch, maybe?” Jon continues, tilting his head a little. 

Brendon nods and then yawns and stretches, back cracking a little. “We could order in again?” he asks, getting up, putting the headphones on the keyboard. 

“Didn’t work out so well last time,” Jon says, shrugging. The road through the forest is tricky; take one wrong turn and you’ll end up driving circles for hours. Plus, Jon’s not really keen on paying seventy-five dollars for delivery again.

“Let’s drive to the store?” Shane wanders in, chewing on a dry looking piece of bread. “I think we’re out of toilet paper too.”

They draw sticks, and Jon pulls the shortest. Five minutes later he’s sitting in their rented Land Rover, with Brendon in the passenger seat and the Beatles blasting from the speakers, driving past the lake and down the forest lane. 

 

*

 

 

They don’t get stoned later on that day; Jon’s bought about five bottles of Johnny’s and some vodka and it feels weirdly nostalgic to be passing around a half-full bottle of liquor instead of a semi-smoked joint. 

“Dude,” Ryan starts, voice heavy, “ _dudes_ , I’m not gonna lie – I’ve been stoned _forever_.” 

Jon hums in agreement even though he has no idea what the hell Ryan is talking about, exactly. It’s like. Ryan gets a little crazy when he’s drunk or stoned and even crazier when he’s both, even when one of the components just stems from a residue from the last day. Jon sometimes wonders which Ryan is the real Ryan, because he knows from experience that alcohol and weed tend to make people more honest, not only about their secrets but also about themselves. 

“Chips,” Jon says, feeling the instant craving for something fried and fatty and unhealthy, and wanders into the kitchen. The chips are still in the grocery bag and Jon pulls them out and starts scoring the cupboards for a bowl. On his way out, he knocks something off the shelf and when he bends to pick it up, he sees it’s a single, dusty drumstick. 

From the living room area, Brendon yells. Jon drops the stick on the kitchen table and jogs out to see what the ruckus is about. Shane has fished out his camera again and is making faux interviews, and Ryan’s giggling and laughing at the camera, Brendon’s nose pressed into the crook of his neck. 

Jon can't remember going to bed that day, but he dreams of the lake and rippling waves against the shore. At breakfast, the sun is already up and on its way down again, and Jon feels disjointed and disoriented. He can't decide if he slept for a day or just a few hours, well into the late afternoon, and it's making his fingers itch.

He gets coffee, steals Ryan’s bagel and then notices the drumstick that’s still lying on the table. He blinks once, twice and then, finally, asks, “Where’s Spencer?” It’s like. It’s like he’s climbing out of the cave now and looking at the sun, and it’s all so _clear_.

“Seriously,” he repeats, “where’s Spencer?”

“Um,” Ryan says, hand stilling on the table, and Brendon turns from where he’s preparing cereal, head tilted slightly. “I don’t know,” Ryan continues. “I saw him like, some time ago. Maybe he’s outside? Working on something?”

“Yeah,” Brendon says, and the sunlight plays shadows over his skin through the newspaper drapes. Jon swallows tightly, and the intense feeling of wrongness gets stronger. He grabs his camera off the kitchen counter and toes on his flip flops.

“Going out for a bit,” he says, pushing the strap of the camera around his neck. There’s a pull, somehow, telling him to get outside, out out. 

“Okay,” Ryan says, “but don’t be too long. We wanna try and record some more today.” His fingers wrap around his cup, long and spider-like, and Jon shivers a little and nods. 

“Yeah, sure,” he replies and nods goodbye. It’s surprisingly bright outside, nearly cloudless and the sky a blue so bright Jon has to squint to look up directly. The cabin door swings shut quietly behind him, the porch shady and cool. Jon pauses for a moment, takes the cap off his camera and adjusts the settings to match the lighting.

The lake is only a few hundred feet away, a glittering line against the horizon, the sharp edges and ridges of the mountains spiking from the surface. Jon wanders closer, two, three minutes, until his naked toes hit the pebbles of the shore, and then takes a picture. 

Through the lens he can see the clouds moving, trees bending in the wind, the afternoon sun red and orange on the water. Jon digs his toes through the pebbles, and wanders along the long end of the shore towards the forest where the sun is setting softly against the trees. 

His camera tells him that he's used up nearly half of the memory card, and he can't remember taking this many pictures after he exchanged the card yesterday or the day before. He starts browsing back through the gallery because probably Brendon snatched the camera off the counter when Jon was sleeping; Brendon's pictures never turn out very good. He can't hold still long enough to focus, Jon thinks, even though Brendon manages to focus on music just fine. 

There's a couple of dark and blurry shots that confirm his suspicion, and then shots of the lake again, rippling waves, the sun dawning over the cabin, shot from the other side of the lake, mist blurring the shores. Jon blinks. He can't remember taking those pictures, even though he can see his fingerprints all over them. The tilt, the angle, the light. 

He continues through the pictures, and then there's Spencer, at the lake on the dock, legs spread out, leaning back on his hands, the evening sun his face. The next one is of him laughing right at the camera, hair tousled from the wind. 

Jon swallows, grits his teeth and puts the camera strap around his neck again. The date of the pictures shows what Jon thinks must have been yesterday, but he's not so sure about that; time and dates seem to blur here. 

The line of the shore is long; Jon wanders past the dock, feet dragging through pebbles and soft, moist sand. The cabin is getting smaller and smaller every time he turns, the wood closing in. He wonders if he should turn, go back and check if Spencer's returned already, but his feet just keep moving and soon the cabin is lost from sight completely. 

In a small bay, circled by rocks and low bushes, he finds Spencer. Or more like, Spencer finds him; Jon is raising his camera on impulse, focusing, and suddenly there's a movement in the corner of his eye. When Jon turns, Spencer is walking towards him, brushing dirt off his back; he looks a little tousled, sleepy, and there's leaves in his hair. 

He's grinning at Jon, eyes bright. “Hey,” he says, closing into Jon's personal space to peek at the screen of his camera. “That's pretty blurry.” He smells like moss and wood, a gentle yet dominant scent, and Jon can’t help but lean in a little. 

“Where’ve you been?” he asks letting the camera drop against his chest and digs his toes deeper between the water-rounded pebbles. 

Spence tilts his head. “Oh just. Here, outside, thinking. I fell asleep.” 

“Yeah,” Jon says, and wants to add _for two whole days?_ , grinning, but Spence continues with a smile. 

“You slept nearly all day,” he says, and bumps his elbow gently against Jon’s side. “We wrote like, half a song.” He ducks his head and Jon wants to say something about how either it’s him who’s fucked up, or time is fucked up, and that he doesn’t remember yesterday. 

“I was looking for you,” he says instead, and raises his camera and takes a macro of Spencer’s nose, lips, part of his eye. “Ryan’s gone a little crazy,” he continues, still looking at Spencer through the lens as if that will change his look on things and give him answers. 

“Yeah,” Spence says, rolling his eyes. 

“He burned his guitar yesterday,” Jon continues, trying to remember if Spencer was there - in a corner maybe. In the kitchen making coffee or at his drumkit ignoring the chaos. 

“That was on like, Monday, today is Wednesday,” Spence says with another grin. He reaches up and pushes Jon’s camera down, squinting at him. “I wanted to go skinny dipping,” he continues, shaking his head a little. “But the water’s way too cold.” 

“Yeah,” Jon says. It’s February, and while it gets kind of hot out here already during sunny days, the lake is too big and too deep to be warmed by a few hours of sunshine. “Pity,” he adds after a second. “Would’ve been nice shots.”

Spence rolls his eyes, but reaches up and playfully pulls the hem of his T-shirt down over his collarbone, before saying, “Well, if you ask nicely…” 

Jon laughs, shakes his head and takes a picture of the flush on Spencer’s cheeks, half-hidden by his hair, and the freckles on his collarbone. 

“Let’s go back,” he says then, more out of habit than anything else. He reaches out and drags his thumb over the patch of dry skin on Spencer’s elbow before wrapping his fingers around his wrist, pulling. It feels, now that he’s found Spencer again, that the world is righting itself. 

The way back to the cabin appears much longer than Jon remembers it being; Jon takes shots of Spencer’s toes digging into the sand and of the sun slowly vanishing behind the mountains. It’s a comfortable silence, just the splash of the water against the shore.

Shane is playing X-Box on mute, legs crossed, when Jon pushes the door to the cabin open. Brendon is napping on the couch in front of the fireplace when they get back, headphones plugged in, book open on his chest. Ryan’s in a chair, glasses and guitar, notepad on his knees, singing quietly. 

“It’s so weird,” Jon says on impulse, and Spencer looks up at him, tilting his head. “I don’t know,” Jon continues. “Just.” 

Spencer laughs, shaking his head, and asks, “Seriously, how drunk did you get yesterday?”

Jon doesn’t know. “I don’t know,” he says. The newspaper on the windows is peeling. Jon raises his camera and takes a shot and then peels it off completely; one window first, then another, and another, until red sunlight is filling the room. 

“Dude,” Brendon says, blinking away and batting at invisible foes. “Too bright.”

Ryan blinks at them through his glasses, and strums another chord, whistling a soft tune. “Where’d you go, Spence?” 

Spencer stretches his back, grinning, and says, “Oh just outside. You know, the real world.” He walks over to Jon, hand reached out and open, and Jon hands him his camera after a second of confusion. Spence shoots a picture of Brendon and Ryan, dust dancing around them. 

“Right,” Jon says, “somebody give me a guitar.” He sits on the armrest of Ryan’s chair and picks the guitar from his idle hands, letting his fingers slide over the strings. There’s lyrics on Ryan’s writing pad and Jon reads them quietly to himself once, and then loud and then Brendon chimes in, voice strong and clear as if he’s heard those words a thousand times before.

Shane doesn't film them this night; he sits and listens quietly, head tilted, opines, camera just as forgotten as Jon's, abandoned, as they make music. They don't write songs - not in the sense of writing things down. Their lyrics have no words and their melodies no end, and appear to have no beginning either. 

Once morning dawns, Ryan has fallen asleep, forehead against Brendon's thigh, and Shane has long vanished upstairs to bed. Spence pokes Jon's side with his toe, looking sleepy, hair all over, stubble starting to show. Jon jerks his hand away from his guitar, and his thumb and fingers are all sore, and he realizes he's been playing for hours. 

"Come on," Spence says, rubbing his eyes. "I need fresh air." 

He wobbles onto his feet, and Jon stretches, back cracking, and puts his guitar aside. His left foot has fallen asleep, and he hobbles a little, following after Spencer, who starts giggling quietly, flexing his toes also. 

"Left?" Jon asks, grinning, and Spence shakes his head and says, "No, right one," and smiles more, eyes amused. "Come on," he repeats, and Jon speeds up, follows him outside. "I found this awesome place," Spence continues, and sort of reaches out to pull at Jon's T-shirt for a moment. 

Jon shivers in the cold mountain air, T-shirt too thin and toes too bare, and grabs a hoodie off the porch railing. Spence is walking ahead, turning at occasions to see if Jon is following; around the house and then Spencer is gesturing him up a wonky ladder. 

"Oh shit," Jon says when he pulls himself up because they're on the rooftop and the straw is all wet, and right in front of them the sun is coming up. "This is way too high up."

Spence laughs, shaking his head. "Oh shut up."

They sit against a little annexed towerette, and Jon digs into his pockets for his three week old pack of smokes and lights one. 

"You're gonna burn the house down," Spencer says, pushing his toes against Jon's. 

"No way, the roof is wet," he says, rolling his shoulders and taking a deep drag. "And we should get out of here anyway." He pauses for a moment, squints against the sun and takes another drag from his cigarette. "We should, though, seriously. Get a real studio, get Ryan some real food and like." He stops again for a split second, eyes flicking down to look at Spencer. "Lay off the weed for like, a day at least."

"Yeah, seriously." Spence laughs, but scoots a little closer, body heat radiating off him. "So yeah. Yeah, burn it down, burn it all down." 

Jon laughs and closes his eyes, fingertips brushing over the inside of Spencer's wrist. Maybe they will, yeah. And start it all anew.

***


End file.
